by Mary Balogh
The carriage had drawn to a halt, and a buxom, red-cheeked woman in a mobcap and spotless white apron tied about a voluminous dress was standing on the stone doorsill outside the open front door, smiling and bobbing curtsies while the coachman opened the door and set down the steps.
“Good day to you, sir,” she said when Marcel had descended to the hardened dirt terrace before the door. “I had your letter, and I sent Jimmy into town yesterday with a list as long as your arm. I have a meat-and-vegetable stew bubbling away on the hob and ready whenever you are hungry, and fresh baked bread to go with it, and I took the liberty of hiring Maisie from the village—Jimmy’s niece’s girl—to help me put clean linen on the beds and beat the rugs and dust the furniture and polish the brass, though I always do that once a fortnight anyway. With your permission I will keep her on while you are here to help with the extra work. Jimmy has fixed the door on the carriage house and mended the leak in the roof, and he has mucked out all the stalls for the extra horses and got in plenty of fresh straw and feed for them. And how do you do, ma’am? I daresay you are ready for a nice cup of tea and some of my fresh scones. Jimmy got some more tea yesterday, and I have filled the caddy so there will be plenty whenever you fancy a pot.”
Marcel groped for the handle of his quizzing glass.
“Good afternoon,” Viola said. “I am Viola Kingsley.”
“Edna Prewitt, ma’am,” the housekeeper said, curtsying again. “And pleased I am to make your acquaintance and to have someone staying at the house again. It has been too long a time, as I am always saying to Jimmy. Maisie can give you a hand if you do not have a ladies’ maid with you. She does hair a treat. And she doesn’t chatter all the time, which I daresay ladies don’t always want to listen to.”
Marcel had his glass halfway to his eye.
“A cup of tea would be very welcome, Mrs. Prewitt,” Viola said. “And perhaps a scone or two. No more, though. We would not wish to spoil our appetites for your stew, which smells quite heavenly from here.”
“It smells better from inside,” the housekeeper said. “And what am I doing keeping you standing out here when you must want to be settling in your rooms and washing your hands? Jimmy always says I talk too much, but I wanted to welcome you properly and make you feel at home, even though it is your home, isn’t it, sir? You haven’t been here for so long, though, that I felt I needed to—”
“Thank you, Mrs. Prewitt,” he said. “We would indeed like to wash our hands.”
Good God.
She bustled upstairs ahead of them and indicated one room for him before taking Viola into another. They were side by side, both rooms facing out over the valley. “I will have Maisie bring up two pitchers of hot water, Mrs. Kingsley, ma’am,” he heard her say before she bustled back downstairs. “It is all ready. I always keep plenty on hand because you never know when you are going to need it, and if there is one thing I hate it is having to wash in cold water. And do dishes.”
Marcel went into Viola’s room after the woman had left. She was standing at the window, looking out.
“She did not seem offended,” she said.
“Offended?” He went to stand beside her at the window and dipped his head to look into her face. “Offended, Viola? Why should she be? She is a servant.”
She did not withdraw her gaze to look back at him. “Is there a color more soothing than green?” she asked. It sounded like a rhetorical question, and he did not attempt to answer. “Flowers would be superfluous here, would they not, when nature is so prolific with greenery. They would look almost gaudy. This is all far lovelier than I imagined.”
Marcel had heard the girl going into his room. Now she came into Viola’s and set a pitcher of water on the washstand before bobbing a curtsy. She did not launch into a chat, however, which was something of a relief.
“Thank you, Maisie,” Viola said, turning toward her, and the girl bobbed another curtsy before leaving. She looked like a younger version of her great-aunt even down to the rosy cheeks. A silent version of her great-aunt. Though come to think of it, she was not a blood relative of Mrs. Prewitt’s, was she? She was Jimmy’s great-niece. It must be a wholesome country look they shared.
“Viola,” he asked, “are you regretting this?”
She glanced at him before turning back to the window and opening one half of it to let in fresh air and birdsong and the distant sound of flowing water. She closed her eyes and inhaled slowly. She had been generally lighthearted during their journey, willing to enjoy herself and enjoy him.
“I have never done anything like this before,” she told him. “Virtuous women do not, you know. We are taught that our happiness is to be found in virtue and in doing our duty with cheerful dignity. Only men are allowed to do what they want while their women look the other way and . . . endure.”
“Why do more women not simply shoot themselves?” he asked.
“Because we know no different,” she told him.
“You believe you have become an unvirtuous woman, then?” he asked.
“Oh, I more than believe it,” she said. “I have quite knowingly abandoned virtue and stepped into the unknown. All this is . . . normal to you, Marcel. It would not occur to you to regret it or wonder about the moral implications of what you are doing or the effect it will have on your character for the rest of your life. It is not at all normal to me. I do not regret what I have done. Neither do I applaud my boldness. But I do not deceive myself. I am doing this. For myself. The future will decide how I will be affected by it all. I will not think of it until I reach that future. It would be better if you do not keep asking. I am here. By choice. Your servants here do not appear to be scandalized. And I am enchanted with this cottage and everything that is out there.”
“Are you enchanted with me?” he asked.
When she looked at him this time, her eyes were laughing. “You sound like a little boy begging for approval,” she said.
The devil he did! He reached out a hand and pulled her into his arms before kissing her thoroughly.
“Yes,” she said against his mouth when he gentled the embrace. “I am enchanted with you. But I very much need to wash my hands, behind closed door, if you please. And then I would like that cup of tea Mrs. Prewitt is brewing for us.”
And thus dismissed, he withdrew to his own room until she was ready to go back downstairs.
You sound like a little boy begging for approval.
Good God!
* * *
• • •
The window of Viola’s bedchamber had been ajar all night. Now she flung it wide and stood before it, breathing in the crisp autumn air as she drew her shawl more closely about her shoulders. There were trails of mist in the valley and pale blue sky above. It was surely impossible to get closer to paradise than this while one still lived. She allowed her heart a conscious welling of happiness . . .
. . . and wondered if there was a letter from Harry awaiting her at home. Or a letter about Harry. She wondered if her brother and sister-in-law and all the Westcotts were still in Bath, celebrating family. For that was what they had been doing more and more in the last couple of years, since the great catastrophe, which might just as easily have broken them asunder into bitter disunity. For one moment she regretted having left Bath so abruptly and thus having spoiled things a bit for everyone.
This was so typical of her. So very typical. Even now, when she had made the conscious decision to do something for herself, she could not quite stop herself from looking back and fearing that she had inconvenienced or hurt others. She had hurt no one. And no one would worry unduly. She did wish she could go back and rewrite that letter to Camille and Abigail, though. She ought to have explained that she had met a friend and been persuaded to spend a couple of weeks or so at that friend’s house. They would wonder, but they would not worry. But at least she had written, and they would know that she had n
ot just disappeared off the face of the earth.
And so she could permit herself this time of unalloyed . . . happiness. It was a rash word to use, perhaps, and a rash thing to feel. But why not? This was what she had run away for. This was what her heart had surely yearned for all her life. Just simply to be happy, however fleetingly. She was not so foolish as to believe in happily-ever-after. That did not mean happiness was to be spurned when it offered itself for brief, vivid moments, as it did now.
Oh, this really was paradise. The ferns above the mist gleamed wetly in the morning sunlight.
“Something,” a voice said from behind her, “is reminding me of winter days at school, when we were hauled from our beds at an ungodly hour each morning in order to run twenty laps about the playing fields before returning to a refreshing wash in icy water and a descent to the unheated stone chapel for half an hour of prayers and moral harangues from the headmaster. I believe it must be— Yes, indeed it is. It is the Arctic air billowing through that window.”
She turned to smile at him. He was lying naked in her bed, his fingers laced behind his head, the bedcovers bunched about his hips.
“Are you a hothouse plant, Marcel?” she asked him. “I want to go out there. I want to run in the ferns. I want to run through the mist. I want to stand in the middle of that bridge and twirl slowly about and breathe in the wonder of it all. Such a feast for the senses.”
“I perceive a compatibility problem,” he murmured, and closed his eyes. But he made no move to cover himself.
“It was you,” she reminded him, “who wanted to dance on the village green.”
“Ah, but that was a means to an end,” he said, his eyes still closed. “I hoped to lure you into bed.”
“It was a trick that worked like a dream,” she said, turning back to the window. “I hope you are proud of yourself.”
“Indeed I am.” She jumped slightly, for his voice came from just behind her, and his arms came about her and drew her back against him. “It was one of the greater successes of my life.”
“Not the greatest? I am crushed.” She rested her head on his shoulder and sighed with contentment.
“Viola,” he said, “this is a little akin to shutting the stable doors after the horse has bolted, I suppose, but do you know—and practice—ways to prevent conception?”
She was very glad he could not see her face. She had rarely been more embarrassed in her life. Women never discussed . . . even with one another. But why was prudery still dogging her footsteps when she was standing here with her naked lover in a remote love nest the morning after a night of loving?
“I stopped having my—” Oh dear. She tried putting it another way. “I stopped being fertile a couple of years ago, after all the upset. It has never come back. I will not conceive.”
“Was that not a very young age for it to happen?” he asked.
“Yes, I believe so,” she said. “I was forty.”
“Ah, so I am bedding an older woman, am I?” he said. “I will pass that dreaded landmark in a short while. At present I am still in my youthful thirties.”
She did the subtraction in her head. He had been only twenty-five, then, when he had so pointedly flirted with her and so tempted her twenty-eight-year-old self. He must have been awfully young when he married and when his wife died. He did not seem at all the sort of man to marry young. Had he been essentially the same man then as he was now? Had he married for practical reasons, perhaps, as she had? Or had he changed quite drastically? But he would not talk about his family, not even his children. Twins. A boy and a girl.
It was strange how someone she had always summed up with a single label—libertine—and the assumption that there was nothing else to know had become a person, though she still knew hardly anything about him. He was a man of mystery, of depths she suspected were dark. Though she could be wrong. But she did not need to know him, except in this way—as the lover with whom she had run away from her dreary life for a short spell. It would be as well if she did not probe deeper. The point of this idyll was not to get to know each other but to enjoy each other.
It sounded very shallow put that way.
Did it matter? Sometimes the human spirit needed the shallows. Sunshine danced on the shallows but was absorbed beyond trace by the depths.
“Those ferns are going to be wet,” he said, “and knee- high. They are going to slap about you from all directions and in all their cold wetness and splash your hands and face and cause you unutterable discomfort.”
“Coward,” she said.
“I have boots,” he said. “I will wager you do not.”
“I have stout shoes,” she told him. “They and the hems of my clothes will dry. So will my person. I am going out there. If you would prefer to remain here, nibbling on your toast—”
“Ten minutes,” he said, snatching up his dressing gown from the floor and striding toward the door. “I will meet you downstairs. Just be warned. I do not want to hear any whining or complaining for the next hour or so.”
She poked her tongue out at him, something she could never remember doing before, even as a child. But he did not turn back to see.
Ten minutes later she watched him come downstairs, all elegant practicality in a greatcoat with too many capes to count at a glance and top boots that gleamed with polish and reached almost to his knees. She hoped he would expire from the heat before they returned to the house. She hoped his boots would be ruined beyond repair. She smiled at him and felt that welling of happiness again.
“A punctual woman,” he said. “No, a woman who is early. A rarity indeed.”
“You were never a woman in my household, Mr. Lamarr,” she said.
He made her a courtly bow, unlocked and opened the door, and offered his arm.
They walked sedately along the dirt terrace that would take them onto the driveway to the top of the valley if they continued. But she did not want to go up to the top. She had seen the view from there yesterday. She slipped her hand from his arm and stepped off the path among the ferns. They did indeed reach her knees, some of them even higher than that, and, yes, they were beaded prettily with moisture, as she had seen from her window. The moisture did not feel nearly as pretty when transferred to her dress and cloak and even her stockings and legs, however. There was still a chill in the air, but there was warmth in the sun too and the promise of another lovely afternoon.
“Are you satisfied, ma’am?” he asked, all righteous and smug inside his top boots. “Shall we go back in for breakfast?”
She smiled dazzlingly at him and turned back to the valley. She spread her arms wide, lifted her face to the sky, whooped with delight, and began to run downhill. It did not take long to discover that it was not as easy as it looked. The carpet of the ferns suggested a smooth slope, but the ground under them was anything but. It was also spongy from the mist and the dew. The slope was a lot steeper than it had looked from above, and certainly longer. After a few moments she needed both hands to hold up her skirts so she would not trip over them. With her eyes she tried to map out a path ahead, but it was virtually impossible to see all the dips and rises and rocks and mud patches. Even the trees were dripping water. She found herself laughing helplessly. It was either that or scream. Somehow she kept her feet under her all the way down, but she was very thankful that the slope leveled off to a grassy bank for a few yards this side of the river. She was able to slow down in time to save herself from the shock of an early-morning swim.
Good heavens, she did not even know how to swim.
And when had she behaved with such little regard for dignity and propriety and even safety? Probably never. There were hills aplenty in Bath. She had never run down any of them as a child. Or spread her arms or whooped or laughed helplessly.
He was still standing on the terrace where she had left him, his arms folded across his chest, looking handsome and vir
ile and disapproving. Oh goodness, oh goodness, when had she ever felt so free? When had she ever felt so happy? There had been fleeting moments—her first love when she was sixteen, the births of her children, Camille’s wedding, Jacob’s christening . . . For the life of her she could not recall any other such moments until she had waltzed on the village green.
Every day since had been crammed with such moments. And every night too.
He was descending the slope with measured steps and great dignity. “You ruined my morning,” he said when he was close enough to be heard. “I was waiting for the giant splash and the shriek as you dashed into the water.”
“And you would have rushed to the rescue like a knight- errant,” she said.
“I must caution you, ma’am,” he said, “against making a gallant hero of me in your imagination.”
She had the satisfaction of seeing that his buff-colored breeches were wet above his boot tops as well as the lower third of his coat. She was soaked almost to the waist, and there was nothing remotely warm about the moisture. Her feet, half frozen, were squelching inside her shoes.
“You still wish to do your ecstatic pirouette on the bridge, I assume?” he asked, offering his arm.
It was some distance away.
“Perhaps we ought to keep that treat for another day,” she said. “Breakfast seems like a lovely idea, does it not?”
“It seemed even lovelier from the top of the hill,” he told her.
“I believe,” she said, “you are not a lover of country living, are you, Marcel?”